Ramblings about knitting, life, exploits, and other things.

Parenthood

December 14, 2010

I've been working on this Holiday Stocking for BookWorm for .. literally .. ten years now.

It's really rather embarassing. Last year, I really tried to finish, but though I thought I was close, this year's efforts have proven that I was not. In November, I began working on the stocking during knit-night every week. I thus guaranteed at least 2 if not 3 hours a week of diligent needlepointing.

This past weekend, I spent an extra afternoon and evening's worth of TV watching with Bookworm diligently needlepointing away (c'mon it was a blizzard out there, we weren't GOING anywhere). I also ventured forth into the icy windy evil that was the weather on Sunday -- to find more floss to match the green that she chose for her name, and to match the blue that was required to finish two ornament balls on the tree. When I got home... it was more needlepoint for me...

And last night, just after knit night, I finally achieved what had begun to feel impossible.

Kitty and I pored over it, finding all the missed stitches (one here, two there -- the buggers hide). And yet, I am not done. Oh no.... for this lovely stocking also has a whole swack of back stitching to do. Yep, outlining things with single strands of floss.

Why? Well... because it really does look better. Without the backstitching, the bows look like this:

November 18, 2010

So.. now that I've found my camera (it was sulking, having been put away for much of WindyCon because I wanted to enjoy the con, not just photograph it), I can show you progress on Golf Pro's sock.

Here's where I am as of 5:00 Wednesday --

Last night, I started just before the decreases and cable crossings began,

The dpn marks where I quit last night, having figured out the cable etc. (It included some frogging, and reknitting).

This afternoon, I snuck in a viewing of the movie 3-Iron. Very strange flick, but compelling. The two main characters don't speak. I'm serious. She has one line -- very near the end -- and he has none. For most of the movie, only people who are themselves violent, or who have witnessed violence have any lines at all.

Anyway, despite the subtitles (it's a Japanese film), I managed to finish off that cable, and knit on into the leg. Then the Mom-Bus was on duty, so I had to stop. The dpn in the next picture shows that spot...

Once the driving duties were over, I snuck in a bit more knitting while watching the first half hour or so of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone (who? us preparing for the opening of the Deathly Hallow's Part I? nahhh... couldn't be) (and no, Bookworm isn't reading through them all at a prodigious rate either).

Then, Golf Pro and I managed to go out for a moderate dinner just us two! (Bookworm went to a friend's to watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - part two of their Movie Marathon this week, and Kitty went to a French Club dinner, and suddenly we were all alone!). I snuck in some knitting while waiting for food to arrive -- Golf Pro didn't even notice <evil wicked grin>.

After dinner, there was more driving, but I did get in a few more rounds, leaving me here:

Which felt like real progress until I laid it down to pose with the finished sock.

Suddenly, I feel doomed. See that cable coming up? yeah, I have to "read" that one too, and figure out what I did, because the notes are still hiding. I seem to recall doing something fancy about the heel too. I hope not :-)

Ahh well, there are two doctors' appointments today, which will give me waiting room time to knit in. We finally get to see Kitty's "Primary Care Physician" for a follow up after her little "incident" last Wednesday. She really needs to hear from someone other than me that it's actually normal for her brain not to work as well following a concussion -- and that it really truly will get better, but that it will take time.

It's not making things easier for her that she appears to have post-concussive syndrome -- a condition whose symptoms include:

Changes in your ability to think, concentrate, or remember.

Headaches or blurry vision.

Changes in your sleep patterns, such as not being able to sleep or sleeping all the time.

Changes in your personality such as becoming angry or anxious for no clear reason.*

According to Mayo, these symptoms can last for weeks or months... or even up to a year or more. This will not make Kitty happy. She's a mentally oriented person, and having her brain act like it's not receiving her radio signals is frustrating and scary. I'm really hoping that the docs today can at least set her mind at ease, even if we don't get promises of a rapid fix.

June 12, 2010

I did finally recover from the Arthrogram/MRI ... but my shoulder is not as good today as it was the day before I went in. Grrr. Tonight, for example, I managed to twang it moving laundry from the front loading washer to the front loading dryer. I had to just sort of stand there and cringe and whimper.

Better yet, I get to wait until Tuesday to learn what that bloody awful test revealed (did I tell you that the doc canceled/rescheduled my appointment that was supposed to have been yesterday?).

On the other hand, I did get all the buttons sewn on the second BSJ

Bad picture, sigh, but it's dark outside, and that always means the pics are... welll.... less than they could be.

I also managed to squeeze out a second sleeve cap from the collection of wee balls of yarn, and have actually finished the Wolf Hoodie! It was scary close -- Here's how much of the silver yarn I have left:

This means that the i-cord that will go through the casing in the hood (and maybe even the body) will be out of the dark yarn. That, I've got plenty of. As soon as the zipper (special order, of course, sigh) arrives in the mail, I'll be installing it, and photographing the finished object. It lies, damp, in the laundry room as I type. Pseudo blocking.

I've even managed to get a couple of repeat's of Irtfa'a's border done:

It's mind boggling to me how long each of those repeats takes! I mean, c'mon! There are only eight rows per repeat, and the longest row has a whopping 18 stitches in it! How can they take so long. What? well, yeah, there are up to four beads (in two sizes) in every other row, but compared to the body, that's, well, nothin'!

Okay, I admit it, each repeat takes a tad less time, but there's all this flipping and stuff going on. I'm hoping that as I get more and more of the shawl bound off the flipping will be less cumbersome. (that is what's happening here, in a very circuitous way -- for each stitch of the body that gets used up, I knit two rows of a repeat, but it's happening). I suppose I could try knitting backwards (well, purling backwards), but I'm not sure about the ptogtbl's going backwards. And those appear in every wrong side row. I'll let you know if I try it.

Not much else to say. The big progress around here seems to be that I managed to put away all the needles on the first floor that are not actually in projects. And yes, that took far longer than any non-knitter would ever understand.

And no, that doesn't actually mean that ALL of the needles have been put away. There are still some escapees upstairs. In theory, I'll round them up in the next week and put them away too.

And next week -- Kitty starts.....

she starts......

Drivers Ed!!!!

At least it's only the Safety Section this time...she's not going behind the wheel just yet.....she's got to learn the rules of the road first -- and pass that test at the DMV.

May 28, 2010

People have said "it's addicting" about various patterns. But until now, I've never found one that I was inspired to cast on and knit again within a week of binding off. Heck, sometimes I struggle with second sock syndrome, and have to fight to cast on a second sock, even though I knit right and left socks...so they're not identical.

But ti's finally happened to me.

The Stockinette Surprise Baby Sweater has got me. This evening, I cast on for number two. Luckily, I have two more babies to knit for.... (okay, perhaps I'm casting on because there are two more babies.... but still...). This one is also stash yarn (only this time it's been in the stash so long it's lost it's ball bands, so I have no idea what I'm knitting with.

I'm alternating baby sweater knitting with working on Irtfa'a. I managed to knit 1 1/2 rows before running out of beads from the old set, am am now trying to figure out how I'm going to allocate them in the edging.

Oh....

And Bookworm graduated from 8th Grade today. The lovely lighting, and the fact that we couldn't get seats anywhere but the balcony meant that this is as good a picture as I could get from the graduation itself...

May 15, 2010

First, there was the alarm which was intended to wake the Golf Pro, who had to ferry Bookworm to school by 0600, so that she could board a bus bound for St. Louis and Six Flags. And then it went off again (making me hate snooze buttons, since Golf Pro had hit that one instead of off).

Then, I woke again when Golf Pro returned, having decided that he wasn't done sleeping.

Then, at last, I woke to my own alarm. Of course, it was far earlier than usual. For Kitty and I had to be at her school around the time I usually drag my weary bones from my bed. Why? For Freshman biology of course. Yes, I caved to the pressure and agreed to chaperone a bus full of high school freshmen to the zoo -- in St. Louis.

What? wasn't I just in St. Louis? well, yes. But we had to come home for a day or two, so I went back.

I was in charge of 11 students (one of whom was Kitty). I'd only met one of the kids before, but we did okay. Upon arrival, I handed out worksheets for a scavenger hunt that they were required to do. We started with bears, The American Black Bear was hiding, but the Grizzly was out with attitude

Well, maybe not so much attitude. Mostly he was placid, hanging out in the pool there despite temperatures that I, for one, found a tad lower than was comfortable.

It was damp and cool and drizzly. So I was pretty happy when our next stop was the Insectorium. I did try to take pictures of the silk spider, but it did not come out well at all. I found the displays quite interesting, but only got one picture worth sharing (and even that's questionable).

dimly seen there is the Salmon Pink Birdeater -- or a very large tarantula (legspans of up to 10"). Spiders as big as dinner plates do seem more like fiction, but these fellows do exist.

I did much better photographing birds

The new penguin home is really quite nifty. Outside, the Humbolts swim about. Inside, you've got these fellows on the right, t ... and right across the walk way we see the more familiar

That's an American Wood Duck in the back ground, and a pair of Buffle Headed ducks on the log.

Here's a Great Egret (and yes, I do think he's pretty great, but that is his name).

Though my favorites, the roseate spoonbills, were too busy showing off how stunning they looked in flight to let me get any good pictures.

I'd likely plague you with even more pictures, but the kids had gotten everything they needed from the flight cage and were eager to get to the bird house. We did pass this fellow on the way

That's a Saddlebill Stork. His buddy had been flaring his wings at the antelope like critters they live with, but I couldn't get a decent shot of that.

Just outside the bird house, we met this Cinerous Vulture.

I'd never seen a vulture sit this way before. I'm guessing he was offended at having had to sit in the rain and was drying his wings, but then that's me the human talking. If I had a nine foot wing span, I'd object to carrying the extra weight they'd hold when wet.

I personally think that his wing stretches were more impressive than this King Vulture, even if he's not got the royal name

We saw many more very cool birds and critters, but I was more focused on keeping track of kids than taking pictures. Once their worksheets were finished, however, I got to turn them loose, and Kitty and I enjoyed lunch, and prowled the gift shops for the last hour or so. I even managed to sneak in a birthday present purchase while she wasn't paying attention.

I was able to knit on the bus (yay). And I would have finished that baby sweater I started on Monday night except that during the cast off row I encountered this:

We are not amused.

We are amused, however, by the magic of this design. It's a variation on Elizabeth Zimmerman's magical Baby Surprise Jacket. It looks like this, rather like I had some difficulties knitting a simple rectangle:

Some wonderful fellow worked up the adaptations to make it stockinette! I had hoped that by avoiding the yarn consumption of garter stitch I'd have enough yarn. And actually, if I'd found them before I'd knit the cuffs in garter, (or if I'd sucked it up and ripped back to do the thing in stockinette all the way) I'd have had enough to bind off and sew the two shoulder seams. But nooo...... So now I'm going to go digging through the sock/fingering stash to see if I've
anything with which I can fake it for the second half of the bind off
row.

Anyway, folded properly, it suddenly, mysteriously turns into this

It'll look better with a bit of blocking and some buttons.

Sigh. I don't suppose any of you have just that last bit worth of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Mountain Creek do you?

May 12, 2010

The afternoon marked another journey to St. Louis -- so that I could take another daughter to Children's Hospital there. Luckily, this time it wasn't an attempt to diagnose some mystery ailment.

Kitty's got congenital hypothyroidism. A huge deal if undetected early, but no big deal to treat. We caught it, and had full diagnosis and treatment in place by the time she was two weeks old. But.. such things need to be monitored and watched, and from time to time it's truly worth it to visit with a specialist.

When we moved here, we moved from a place with actual choices in pediatric endocrinologists to a place with none at all. For the past nine years, Kitty's doctor has monitored and appropriately adjusted doses, and cared for her well. But puberty, those several years when the body's hormone system goes awry, and brain chemistry shifts and all things adjust and re-tune themselves ... can play havoc with systems that worked just fine before. And thus, we took ourselves to the nearest pediatric endocrinologist our insurance company counts as "in network".

The journey down made me think that there is a section of I-70 that is permanently beset by torrential rains. When last we drove it, the rain got so bad I had to pull over to the side of the road until it had abated some. This time, though my wiper blades were flashing as fast as ever they could, the rain was not beyond their ability.

And once again, the rains lessened as we crossed the bridge over the Mississippi.

As we passed the evening in our hotel, I cast on for a wee gift...... I'm hoping this

will suit both baby and mother.

Our doc was delayed, and thus, though we had a 9:30 appointment Tuesday morning, we were not seen by the actual doctor until nigh on 10:30. Luckily, we'd gotten all the blood-work we needed ahead of time. We learned a few things, most important of which was that we're doing well. A mild tweak to the dosage is all we need do - and it is one our own local doc would have (and in fact did) order upon seeing the test results.

I'm pleased with the results, but sure wish we didn't have to travel hundreds of miles, and pay for hotels, to learn them. And yet I am grateful that despite all our other financial challenges, we've still got health insurance and thus can afford to see the specialists at all.

The journey home Tuesday afternoon, we traveled under sunny skies. And we saw something I'd never seen before: bison! Who knew there were bison in Southern Illinois?

April 25, 2010

(There are more pictures where she's kicking the ball and all that other good soccer stuff).

And I was merrily knitting away on a pair (okay, on one of a pair) of wrist warmers that I'm knitting for one of my dear dear friends that I've not gotten to see in person in almost a dozen years. I cast on what I was pretty sure were enough stitches ... and knit a good three inches in the designated lace pattern.

We all know where smug gets us, don't we.

It gets us a lovely trip to frogland.

But... that got me to do something much more interesting with the pattern design.

So today, while it rained... and rained.... and rained, I pretty much took the day off.

I watched a bunch of TV, clearing out stuff that has been sitting on the
DVR since I was too busy watching the Olympics to watch my "regular"
shows.

And while I did that, I fussed, and knit little swatchy things and fidgeted, and played with charting software...

and then cast on for real (with enough stitches this time) and knit some more...

and recharted some more...

And I'm quite pleased with the results! I just have to decide whether or not to SHOW them off... so the wonderful friend gets to watch them grow, or to hide them so they're a complete surprise when she gets them. I can at least show you the yummy yarn I'm knitting them from

Malabrigo Sock, in Turner (which is ever so much greener than it appears in this picture (and my photoshopping skills (what with not having photoshop) are less than they could be).

April 03, 2010

Turns out that my key has a little chip like thing in it. That chip talks to the car. When the key is in the ignition, they evidently carry on this long conversation, in which the car repeatedly asks "are you MY key?" and the keep keeps confirming that yes, it is THIS car's key.

They had a communication problem the other day, and the key must have gotten tired of saying "Yes, I'm YOUR key." Either that, or the car couldn't hear it. Either way, the car didn't get the assurances about the key being it's very own key. So the car shut off.

According to the dealer, this is a fluke. A freak sort of thing. The two are speaking to each other well now, and the dealer assures me that it won't happen again. (What, they've got marriage counseling for keys and cars now?). I warned them that if this silliness occurs again we'd have to take more drastic measures, and they brought my car home to me.

Yep... they brought it to me. AND..... the fellow who did that helped me bring my empty garbage cans in from the curb.

I'm on a board of directors for a local not-for-profit - on the executive committee even (aren't we impressed? nahh...). They're having a bit of a crisis, and it meant that I suddenly had lots to do. This week that board was a bit like a full time job. It has kept me from doing a whole bunch of stuff that I needed to do. Some of those have deadlines, so I'm scrambling.

The good stuff about Friday's meetings...... when I got home, I got to see my magnolia tree looking like this

Actually, it looked even better -- but this morning there was a bit of rain and a lot of wind. Welcome to spring in the Heartland. See... wind:

The rest of the week also included interviews with three different Realtors. We're trying to choose one to sell the house that I don't want to leave. I have to tell you, walking through the house, pointing out the good things... is not making it easier to leave. And seeing it cleaner and cleaner and closer and closer to ready to list.... not making it easier either.

So far, we've gotten two recommendations on how much to list the house for -- they're REALLY far apart. So, I'm trying not to mourn the loss of a house I love, and I'm being seriously confused by the Realtors. It makes me cranky.

Tonight was much more fun.

We were going to make some cookies... and of course there's the egg dyeing exercise. I figured we could blow the eggs needed for the cookies, and then boil a few, and have plenty to dye.

Last year, I proposed that we blow eggs. The kids found it to bee an awful imposition -- gross, hard.. and overall unacceptable. I figured I could require each of them to blow one egg, and I'd blow a couple more and we'd have four eggs for the cookies. So this year, they said no way... I blew an egg, they said it was gross.... and then once they'd each blown one egg, they insisted on blowing more. We wound up with six before I put a stop to it.

Here are five of them.

There's even a bit of knitting going on... but not enough to show you pictures of.

Tomorrow -- we'll hunt eggs in the morning, and celebrate Bookworm's birthday in the evening. Now THAT will be fun.

January 11, 2010

So, we're not through with the journeys through medical land. Without boring you with tedious details, the short version is that this morning, Kitty had an EEG. Allegedly, we'll have results in a week. (We will not discuss how I feel about waiting that long to know whether we learned anything at all.

Instead, we'll laugh a bit at what we did to prepare. You see, they want their victims patients sleep deprived. They wanted us to put her to bed at midnight and have her get up at four a.m. I laugh. It keeps me from weeping. Instead, since she got up unusually early (for her) on Sunday morning, I just kept her up until 3:00 a.m. Note -- I kept her up. That meant that I stayed up. At least I got to use caffeine.

How did we do this? We watched a little TV, we read a little, then we played on the Wii Fit Plus (even though it makes no bones about my now being officially over weight according to my BMI, it still says my Wii Fit Age is 20 years younger than my actual age) -- she played for ten minutes, I played for five...rinse, repeat ... (the hip is still a problem). We played cards -- Bullsh*t, Gin, Go Fish, Rummy... and then, at about, oh, 1:30 a.m. we got inspired and baked chocolate chip banana bread.

I'm wondering -- was it brilliant inspiration? or up-too-late-giddiness that made us fill in with insanely finely chopped apples when we realized that we didn't quite have enough banana? Either way, it worked a treat.

Finally, at 3:00, with the bread out of the oven and cooling on the stove top, I sent her to bed, and worked on getting my overly caffeinated self to sleep. I finally crashed at 3:45. And got up at 6:45 to get her up... Again, I got caffeine, she didn't. And we were successful in getting her to the EEG folks awake, but tired enough so that she fell asleep for them while all wired up. This is a good thing.

(And why is it that when SHE needs to be sleep deprived, SHE gets more sleep than I do?)

When we finally got home, I took a nice nap. But am still sleep deprived enough that I've now knit the second shoulder cap on the Wolf Hoodie four times. First I picked up the wrong number of stitches and didn't notice it until AFTER I'd done that lovely short row cap. Then I kept "centering" the top of the sleeve in the wrong place (and no, it doesn't go where the "shoulder seam" is -- that's actually a bit down the back side of the shoulder to allow for a full straight line bind off all the way across -- stability is good.

So. I've no knitting to show you except OLD knitting. Last year's knitting (minus a picture of my Dad's hat, which I evidently never took, and pictures of at least one pair of socks....)

My favorite part of that collage is that I released patterns for four of those projects, and am likely to have at least one more ready soon (unless I manage to get some amazing "big" publisher to pick it up!)

I'm going to go have a piece of Banana Bread, and then head to bed now. Maybe I'll come back and do a full review.... maybe not. If you have an opinion ... I'll be delighted to hear it.

December 03, 2009

And it's full of laughter. And some of the delicious strange views of our knitting output that most folks don't get to see (certainly not the recipients thereof).

It also included many rounds of the Geico Pothole ad

Oh noooo, your stitches are all dropped and junk. Did I do that?

For me, however, it's not quite as full of knitting progress as I might like. I only got two rows of Irtfa'a finished over the course of the two plus hours we gathered in my living room knitting together.

I did, however, receive the benefit of the Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth's husband's (Network God) assistance: now when Bookworm or Kitty log on to their computers, mine is no longer booted off the internet. I consider this to be a supreme bonus.

I also resolved a bit of lace confusion for the DTB Elizabeth after she discovered that the center panel of her shawl was not going to end up one the correct row if she did the prescribed number of repeats. I found the problem (an inadvertent repeat of about 8 rows on the center chart), and helped her locate the right row in that center section so she could fix it via surgery instead of frogging back that far. There were no photos of the surgery. But we did put one of my 000 needles to use.

While I was on a roll, I figured out what was warping Banshee's lace, which required several attempts because both of us were blind to the obvious. That pattern is kicking her butt, and it tried to kick mine. But in the end, we got it figured out.

What I didn't do was catch up to the DTB Elizabeth. I'm hoping that this next week will let me progress while she works up that center section again. Maybe I'll be where I belong by next Wednesday. Maybe

I've also slipped in a little work on my new cowl (for which I had to do the first three rows about five times.

It's a sad state of affairs when a pattern of my own design kicks my butt, but I discovered that the error lay in my inability to distinguish between counting to three and counting to four. That's why that picture up there is so full of markers. I'm usually stingy with my marker use. The DTB Elizabeth will use as many as ten markers to my one. But not on this pattern.... at least not for the firt few rows. I had to use many markers to keep it straight. Practically a marker every ten stitches. But they've allowed me to get the pattern set to where I can see it. More progress is likely tonight ... Kitty has a choir concert, and I have to go early to get her there. I'll be sitting for awhile.

October 17, 2009

The denizens of Shadowland are now 2/2 in the battle against the creeping crud. I'm still marginal, but Bookworm is afflicted. She's been hit worse that I have been -- the fever showed up last night. We went to "Convenient Care" this morning, and after a longer-than-for-an-appointment, but not scandalous wait, we were seen by a Physician's Assistant who confirmed flu (though not what kind, and I didn't have the heart to force Bookworm to endure a test), and prescribed Tamiflu. Evidently, Bookworm's asthma gets her on the short list for the Tamiflu (most folks have to suffer through without because the supply is short).

Meanwhile, I'm feeling better enough to be up and awake ... and therefor knitting.*

As you may recall, there was a challenge made a couple of weeks ago, when Beading Banshee claimed she'd finish her Chrysopolis before me. I lurched into gear, and made great progress for awhile, but then felt guilty when she had a feud with one of her ankles, which gave way causing her (in her words) to face plant, and strain her wrist on the way down. I put Chrysopolis away for a while. But in the last day or so, the fact that I'm so close to the end began to taunt me.

Now... I'm not about to STOP working on Nurse Potter's shawl. But, I figure I can take turns with them for a bit, and finish up Chrysopolis. So, when we're watching TV, I work on one for one show, and then the other for the next show. In this way, I've gotten to within one row of finishing the main border pattern on Chrysopolis:

This means that I'm ten rows from the bind off (counting purl rows). Wahoo!! (The next challenge will be finding space and enough blocking wires to block her -- she's gonna be HUGE!!) ((Oh Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth?? have you blocking wires I can borrow??)

I have also finished the first repeat of chart B on Nurse Potter's Garden of Alla Variant (Ravelry link).

This picture manages to wholly mangle the lovely colors in this shawl. If I were a better blogger, I'd work at getting a GOOD picture, but two posing sessions is all we're up for today. At this point, I'm starting to mess with the chart -- Though it would make a lovely cozy wrap, I don't really want to keep increasing six times every other row forever... I'll rut out of yarn before the shawl is long enough to be worth while. So, I'm backing down to four increases every other row, and keeping the center back section stable from here on. That'll create more of a Faroese shape, and I'm awfully fond of those.

Meanwhile, Kitty's been doing some amazing stuff. As the result of ... a ... unique challenge at school, she switched her schedule around, and finally got into Treble Choir. The day before the music department's first concert (all the choirs did a couple of numbers). In those 30 hours, she got new music, and memorized two fairly long pieces -- and performed after only 2 days of rehearsal! I didn't get to see it, I was home with Bookworm trying not to infect the school, but Golf Pro said she was great.

September 01, 2009

Yesterday had some good points, and some bad points. (Does anyone else hear the Talking Heads when they hear that phrase?)

I'm gonna get all predictable on you, and go through my day marking the good and bad. You can listen to the Talking Heads if you want to.

Good Point: I slept in, and my family handled the whole getting up and getting ready for school gig without my help! (Because you can sleep, sleep in the daytime, if you want to).

Bad Point: The Golf Pro left town right after dropping off Bookworm at school, and I slept through the moment when I could have hugged him goodbye.

Good Point: I had an excellent breakfast with a dear friend.

Good Point: I came home to find the garage door fixing guy here.

Better Point: Whatever was ailing the garage door (for months now -- luckily it's the single door bay behind which we store bikes and such, and thus weighs little enough that we could open it by hand), had healed itself (or he healed it without knowing it). Now my garage doors all work.

Bad Point: My new bike's back tire is FLAT, and I can't persuade it to take air with any of the bike pumps we have.

Good Point: I found the button for Must Have, and even though I had to go through several permutations to get the right size hole (and then several adjustments because in a math impaired haze I forgot that seven buttons means SIX spaces between them, not seven, so I kept coming up with room for an eighth button), I finished them all.

Bad Point: That's the only thing I got accomplished from the time I got home from a late breakfast to the time I had to leave to fetch kids.

Good Point: Today was Library Day at the school. Kitty got her school library card, and, having done some advanced scoping, promptly plundered the school library for 7 hardbacks (some fiction -- some NON-Fiction - my girl is getting books to learn about un-assigned stuff!). She got so many that the librarian recognized she'd have trouble getting to class on time if she tried to go to her locker to stash them -- she wound up going back after school to pick them up.

Bad Point: The traffic around Kitty's school is a nightmare. I will NOT drive there between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00. Nope. We haven't yet figured out the best place for me to pick her up, and today's option was ... not the best. so she had to walk quite a ways to get to me -- carrying a double dose of books.

Good Point: We all went to Old Navy for a magic 20% off everything you buy sale. Bookworm found some very cute (and much needed) jeans that fit perfectly.

Bad Point: Kitty and I tried on what seems like a thousand pairs of jeans. We currently can't wear what Old Navy sells. There was a pair for each of us that was close -- but miles too long. The short versions do NOT fit the same. We're too stubborn to buy JEANS that much too long. I hate hemming jeans.

BAD POINT: While sitting in the dressing room watching Kitty try and try and try to find jeans, I was finishing up my button band knitting. I had, in fact, just knit the last stitch on the last row before the bind off when cable failure happened.

Look how many stitches are not on any needles or cables.... notice that there are more of the same out of view on both sides of the picture. Notice that there is no cable attached to that needle tip. We are not amused.

Good Point: I was able to pretend to be calm long enough to carefully place it all back into the knitting bag in such a way that no stitches dropped before I got it home.

Good Point: Dinner.

Good Point: The mail yielded this:

A plastic bag with yarn from The Coveted Yarn. I know, I'm supposed to be on a yarn diet (aren't we all?), but they were having a SALE... and this is Beaded Rayon...and... well... somehow the yarn fumes came through the computer screen and befuddled me. But lookee.... this...

which could totally pass of a single giant hank of yarn, so much so that when I first opened the mailer, and saw the plastic bag, I wondered whether they had been out of stock on one of the colors I'd ordered, because I was just sure I was looking at one hank of yarn....

is actually this

One hank of Deep Blue See and one hank of Island. I just might knit them together into one garment.

Whee.

Good Point: early knit night at my house this week! Let the sewing up begin!

Bad Point: I wasn't ready to sew because I had to salvage those stitches and bind off. Then...

Good Point: The Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth has achieved her first ever smooth, flat, clearly picked up the right number of stitches at the right ratio button band! It lies flat and lovely. She is very proud. There would be pictures, but her brown sweater clearly needs daylight to show off for the camera. By this point, it was not daylight.

Bad Point: Elizabeth's sleeves did not want to go gracefully into the place alloted for them. That seam has been withdrawn. We will try again.

Good Point: I DID get my button band bound off.

Bad Point: There was a knot in the yarn -- about 3/4 of the way through the bind-off row. I hate that.

Good Point: My sleeve cooperated (a little fudging was required, but not very much) -- even though I knit the medium back and the large front -- makes for a better accommodation to my actual body size.

I will sew in ends, and likely sew on buttons, and then leave the other sleeve until our next knit-night so that I can show DTB Elizabeth exactly how I did it.

Today, I will resist the urge to start something totally new with my yummy Beaded Rayon. (But I do not promise not to prowl the Ravelry pages for ideas.

August 24, 2009

I'm also a bit peeved. It turns out that her specialist told her regular doc that if these came back normal, he'd just assume the whole problem was stress related. When I asked specifically about the possibility that it was stress, he said he didn't think that was the problem, and that all sorts of things pointed to it not being stress related. This leads me to believe that what I should have done (which is actually what I wanted to do) was wait until (if) she started experiencing symptoms again before dragging her to St. Louis and subjecting her to the stress of the tests (and the radiation dose).

No wonder health-care costs so bloody much. Docs are doing unnecessary tests just to cover their butts. Grr. These test might well have been necessary, but it's now clear to me that the doc didn't really think so -- he was just covering himself, and letting me feel that all that could be done was being done. Sigh.

Deep breath.

At least I have answers.

I also have a sweater back on the blocking boards. Yessiree ... Must Have is blocking away in preparation for the sewing up party Wednesday night.

I'll be consulting with the Divine though Blogless Elizabeth about whether we plan to pick up and knit the button band together, or ought to be starting it apart.

Chrysopolis is back in action. Lace crisis averted. All is well. But you'll never be able to detect the progress if I force her into a photo shoot, so I'm not gonna do it.

August 23, 2009

Care :: Bear (ohh am I ever embarassed about that, but it IS the first thing that came into mind)

Grandpa :: Buddy (my grandpa)

Shooting :: photography

Sunglasses :: I wear them at night

Stampede :: dolphins

Painstakingly :: laboriously

Terrible position :: one play away from check-mate, on the losing side

Not only that... but, well, I have some mutterings about the stuff they send home from school...First, every teacher seems to think that their students must have a separate 1 - 1/2" binder for their class. Clearly, no student is competent to keep their papers organized w/o a separate binder for each class. The fact that this means a kid will need a full size litigator's briefcase to carry all their stuff EVERY DAY is clearly lost on them. Not to mention the challenge of getting this up and down the stairs between classes: (picture ganked from page linked above)

But slightly more troubling is the policies they send home. Like this one:

Late Policy

ALL LATE WORK WILL BE COUNTED FOR 1/2 CREDIT

For every day late 2 days are given to turn in the assignment.

Make up Work

If a student is absent he/she has the same number of days to make up an assignment as the days missed.

Extensions may be granted for long absences

At first, I thought that what she really meant was that if you're ABSENT, you have 2 days to turn in an assignment when you come back(since that was the standard policy in Middle school), but the Make Up Work policy undid that expectation. Now, I have no idea what she means.

So, she's grading the biology class. Here's hoping that she's not grading on the clarity of your reports! (I'm going to see if I can get some clarification for that one.)

As for me, I'm working away on Must Have. I had a bit of an argument with the fronts about the short-rows, but in the end, I got them to cooperate. I anticipate that I'll complete the fronts tonight or tomorrow. That means they can be blocked (again) in time for a sewing together party on Wednesday for my Knit Night with The Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth. (though Erin may bring one of her sweaters along for the fun). I'll take pictures.

August 19, 2009

As anticipated, we drove to St. Louis yesterday -- because today Bookworm had a slew of tests.

We entered St. Louis in a brutal storm. At first, it was just a little cloudy, then it was like driving past a curtain -- it was light, and then it was not. I turned on my lights, and watched the trees whipping around in the wind. After several miles, it started to rain. And then ... well, the sky just fell in. The rain was coming down so hard that I couldn't see to drive faster than about 35. That's not a good speed on the highway -- especially when you really do need the signs to tell you where to go. Others seemed to see better, but I knew that even with my flashers on, I was moving dangerously slowly -- so I pulled off to the side at an on ramp, and waited for the rain to back off just a little. The prospect of crossing that bridge into St. Louis in that was just too scary.

Eventually, though, it calmed down. We found our hotel without much fuss, got checked in, and then wandered down to the restaurant. While I'll be the first to admit that Applebee's is not my favorite chain, it does fare better when you're not trying to eat a healthy low-calorie diet. By the time our meal was served, it had become down right pleasant outside again.

The wait staff here is great. The hotel is one that is connected to the Barnes/Jewish & Children's Hospitals by one of those habitrail things (it brought back memories of another such walkway from Stitches a few years ago). This means that the wait staff wind up serving folks who are staying in the hotel while a loved one is staying in the hospital. They get to know folks. This is Shannon.

While we were there, a woman came up with her two kids to say hello, and to thank Shannon for taking such good care of them while they were there 2 years ago -- her husband had some bone related thing going on. Shannon was our waitress too.

When she greeted us, however, she had help from her co-worker --

Kellen is quite the ... vibrant fellow. He loved Bookworm's outfit, and has opined that she'll be "make it big" someday. He could just tell by her flair for the original. He had flair too...We had to pry him off that table to get the "saner" picture with Shannon.

Gotta love staff with a positive attitude like these folks.

After dinner, we went back to the room, watched a movie or two and went to bed... to prepare ourselves for the day.

So... I armed myself with three projects this trip. I worked on Must Have at the Hotel, and am now a the bust darts for the front.

I tried working the 9 - 5 socks. After several rounds, it looks like this:

Frankly, the pattern here is a bunch of fussiness. Not bad, but
fussy. And all the pretty twisted stitches that it creates are pretty
much invisible here. I've decided not to play, and pretty much put them away after one other pattern attempt. I've frogged this bit, and am going to start on a variation
of the Feather & Fan pattern to see if I like that more in this
yarn.

Today, however, I spent most of my knitting time with Chrysopolis.
I've fixed the original problem and made some progress. Mostly,
however, I spent time with Bookworm and the folks in the "imaging"
department at Children's Hospital in St. Louis.

First, we went for a sonogram, where I couldn't see to knit, and didn't take any pictures. It was interesting watching a sonogram of something other than a baby. Bookworm didn't want to see a thing.

Then we went for Nuclear Imaging to get the Meckel's Scan. (Warning, very soon there will be "medical pictures" If you get squeamish about that sort of stuff, bail now). During her scan, Bookworm got to watch a movie while they took a sequence of images spaced five minutes apart for half an hour. I knit, and took a couple of pictures of the stuff I could see on the screen. It was actually pretty cool to watch the dye progress through her body.

Here, you can see her, all settled in watching Sinbad while the stuff works its way through

And once it had done its job, the dye made stomach tissue show up really clearly... (that's a front view and a back view -- evidently they take both simultaneously).

Then, they turned the machine on it's side to get a different viewAnd then, we were done there... and went back out to the waiting room. The cool thing -- I got to stay in the room with her for every part of this. I like that they find ways for the parents to not have to leave their kids during these procedures.

Especially the next part. She had to have an Upper GI Flow Through test. The key element here -- barium. While they've made drinking barium better than it was when I had to do it in 1978... it's not that much better.

First she had to drink some, and they had her roll all the way over (back to side, to tummy, to other side to back) and they started taking images -- watching it go through ... and yes, I got to watch the screen.

They "filmed' a bunch, then had her drink more so we could watch it go down her throat...

And then, after making her drink a ton of the stuff (which made her want to throw up, but she somehow managed to keep the crap down), we waited for about an hour, and they came to take more pictures. This time, they employed a strange "balloon" to push on her belly to sort of spread out the views...(she claims this did not hurt)

they took several more images,

(one more)

(Don't you wish you could see YOUR intestines like this?). Then finally declared that the barium had made it through her entire small intestine, and we could go!

Yahoo!

Only AFTER all this crap did we see what I think is the best view in Children's

It reminds me of a restaurant at Epcot (it's near the end of that post, or you can just look here)

We passed this on our way out.

Despite ideas about going elsewhere after the morning's ... er .. events, Bookworm wanted to just come home. So we gathered our stuff, and headed out. She slept most of the way home. (The drive was wholly uneventful).

August 08, 2009

We've had this lovely pleasant not-quite-summer weather for so long that I've forgotten how to handle real mid-western summer weather. So once warned that this weekend means a return to 90+ degrees with a heavy dose of humidity ... I nixed any outdoor plans.

First, we slept late.

Then I caught up on all my Lexulous and Wordscraper games on Facebook, and read blogs and chased quizzes and learned that I might just be able to kill a man if it came down to it:

My result for The Can You Kill a Man? Test...

Maybe I could...

I scored 20% Cold and 46% Level-Headed!

In a pinch, I could do it, but I'd need a damn good reason to. And I'm not going to be too happy afterward.

I think this is actually a pretty accurate answer. Eventually, though, I had to venture out of the house. So I took the girls, and Kitty's bike, to a local Bike Project establishment. Bike Projects are very cool things. They're all over. In Austin, in Baltimore, in Bloomington,in Ghana, in Lansing, in
New Orleans, in Reno, in Urbana,in Wilmington, in ... (you get the picture... just Google Bike Project and your town name; if there's not one in town, go for the state, you're sure to find one). Our goals for this trip were several:

Find out how Kitty can join up to learn how to repair bikes (they have this project for kids under 15, where by the kid learns, repairs a bike for the Project, and then gets to repair a donated bike for his or her own and keeps it!);

Get a basket of sorts put on the bike so that she can carry the clarinet to and from school;

Get a helmet for Kitty, so she can ride her bike to and from school;

Get a light of some sort on the bike in case "from school" becomes "in the dark";

Miraculously find a bike that fits me so I can replace the bike that was destroyed when GolfPro tried to help me clean out the garage a few years ago.

And... we accomplished them all! We still need a really truly headlight for Kitty's bike, but we got the rest covered (including BRIGHT blinky lights for front and rear), and I'll be getting her a horn (likely one of these) before school starts, but her bike is ready to go, basket and all. Turns out if she joins up, someone will help her learn...but they're still working on the best way to go about it.

As for my bike?

Isn't it lovely? Note the lovely drink bottle holder? And, though you can't see it in this shot, a nice rack on the back .... see...

Yes, the seat is a tad torn up. I'm likely to have at it with duct tape. I might even go shopping for a new one. But... since NEW bikes are hard to find for under $400.00 these days, I'm feeling pretty darned smug about this one. Our whole bill, "new" (i.e. repaired donated) bike, basket, blinkie lights, helmet and all, was $115.00. And the repair work? Caitlin did most of it herself, with guidance, and thus we paid nothing but learned something.

Life is good.

That was enough of the hot outdoors though, so we've come home, and I've been reading blogs etc. and found a new-to-me but delightful blog .... with a contest!

I did try to get pictures of Natalia, since she's clean and dry and everything. But she's shy today. We have to wait until the sun is in a different place in the sky I guess.

June 15, 2009

Yesterday I went to my step-daughter's high school graduation. The drive up gave me knitting time with Must Have (I'll show you later), and went smooth as glass until we'd committed to the Dan Ryan expressway. Then it went from cruising along to a dead stop. It took forever to get the last 20 miles of the 150 mile trip.

The event was pretty amazing.

It was huge! Very very traditional -- in a unique sort of way.

First off, they had everything all set up on the football field. The parents and other folks were all seated on the bleachers. And the field was set up with chairs for the grads:

That's a lot of chairs there... Look at 'em all!

Like 750 of them or so...

Which means that there are... you guessed it... over 720 graduates! Had it been a rainy day, they'd have had to limit the number of folks (so you got tickets -- luckily we had tickets, just in case).

And then we get to traditions. One of this school's hundred year old traditions is that no grads wear caps or gowns. The guys wear black suits (reminiscent of tuxes) and the girls wear white dresses. Tea length or longer. They told LJ's mom that if her dress was too short, she might not be able to participate. But then, if you didn't want to wear a white dress, one of the options was a white pant suit. (?)

This created an unexpected look for a high school graduation.

Notice that they're all walking through a tulle covered arch way?

Eventually, they'd all walked through, and sat in their chairs. The speeches were actually very good.

Then we got the lining up to receive your diploma part. For some reason, even though there was a stage, they didn't actually walk across it. This made it hard to see your kid at that magic moment. Heck, without the zoom on my camera, I couldn't see it half this well! But at least we were on the right side of the field to see LJ as she waited for her turn.

Turns out that even though her dress was technically too short, she got to play anyway. (Yep, she's the one whose legs you can see.)

There were some amazing dresses... truly lovely (and a few, um, commentworthy, variants).

After the event we took pictures of the happy grad and her family (here's one with the sisters)

And one with her proud dad

And though I took many more... I'll spare you.

After this -- a delicious dinner, and the return trip home.

I've only got one question.... when did I get old enough to have a kid graduating from high school???

June 01, 2009

So. The Bookworm had her lovely Endoscopy. (I have pictures printed out - I'll scan and upload them if you REALLY want me to, but you'll have to beg).

And they biopsied some things. Here's what we now know:

Her liver function is fineHer pancreatic function is fine
Her thyroid function is fine
Her glucose levels are fine.Her sedimentation rate is fine (blood).Her Blood chemistry (sugar, kidney function, minerals an salts) is fine.Her Amylase, Lipase, and Celiac serology are all fine.There is no sign of GERD.There is no sign of esophagitisThere is no sign of gastritisThere is no sign of ulcerHer esophagus, pyloric sphincter, stomach, duodenal bulb, and upper intestine all look fine.

The doctor is "confident" that this is not a food allergy, but will run that blood test for us if we want it.

She still has some nausea, and
her abdomen hurts in the small intestine area, and the back of her head
hurts.

So. The next best guess is that she has Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) ...
which means stomach migraine variant. That is treated with migraine meds. The National Digestive Diseases Clearing House website lists three of them, two of which the Bookworms' doc identified as his top choices.

Even though we've pretty much ruled out an acid related problem, the pediatric gastro-enterologist's first suggestion was that we fill a scrip for Prilosec and having Bookworm take it for a month to see if it helps. It wasn't until I called him on that that he acknowledged that he considered that only b/c the Physician's Assistant working with Bookworm's primary care doctor had given us the scrip in case it helped while we waited to see this man. He figured it would "do no harm" to try the previously prescribed prilosec.

This made me a little nervous. At this point, my trust is teetering on the edge.

Then I looked up the two drugs we're considering for treatment of the CVS/Stomach Migraines. The first, amitriptyline seems okay, I guess. it's actually an anti-depressant (which actually makes a modicum of sense to me, as stress is a known trigger for stomach migraines). Of course, nausea and vomiting are among its side effects. (I wonder, are they among EVERY drug's side effects?). More troubling are the potentially serious potential side effects like ... oh... arhythmia and other cardiac symptoms. To put her on this one, we'd need to get an EKG first.

Reading up on the other drug (which I think was his first choice) was the point at which my trust fell fully off the fence. Propranolol is a beta blocker. it too has some possible cardiac side effects. But when I read this: "You should not use this medication if you are allergic to propranolol,
or if you have asthma or certain heart conditions, especially second or
third degree heart block." (emphasis added) I knew that someone wasn't paying attention. Bookworm has asthma.

Time for a second opinion.

Now all I have to do is find a good (okay, the best in the country) pediatric gastroenetrologist to take her to.

Please..... life... universe....let us find a clear safe answe soon so I can go back to writing mostly about my knitting... m'kay?

May 30, 2009

At the beginning of this week, I had two lovely girls in middle school.

On Thursday evening, one of them put on her first ever grown-up fancy dress, let me style her hair and put make up on her face, and put high heeled shoes on to go to the last dance of the year at school.

As moms are wont to do, I took a slew of pictures. There was the obligatory formal posed seated shot

and the full length standing shot

And the one of her shoes up close (did I really buy her those heels???)

And of course.... the shot she likes best:

On Friday, I watched her walk across the stage -- to receive the official certificate saying she's been promoted from Middle School to High School. I tried valiantly to photograph that. This was as good as I could get.

She was all done by then. (what, you want to see the stage shot? it's really bad....

April 04, 2009

She had two friends spend the night last night, so she woke up with friends, and evidently they had Starburst for breakfast.

We watched TV together. While she went to the store with the Golf Pro to pick out her cake and her food, I blocked Laminaria ....

I took pictures in the breeze....

And went back to Bookworm's plan.

Which meant we watched Mama Mia.

According to our family tradition, the birthday person gets to choose whatever we have for dinner. Bookworm went for comfort food:

What you see here is two main courses. Two. For the girl who eats enough to keep a very very small bird alive. Tuna casserole and what we call Shepherd's Pie. and, of course, chocolate cake.

and... her big sister came down for the day from the big city.

It was good for her, even if she got no books at all for her birthday. She did get one present she's not even aware of yet. She said she wanted "fuzzy" for her birthday. So... I snuck in and lined her locker with silky faux fur fabric. Soft and fuzzy ... I can't wait til she finds it on Monday.

But... omigod... she's TWELVE now!! She gets to ride in the front seat... She's one short year away from being a TEENAGER! How did THAT happen!!???

April 02, 2009

We had to have our suitcases packed and lined up next to the busses by 7:15 a.m. That means that we were up and moving really early. So early that this was still "playing" when I left my room.

After that, we had a few moments for breakfast before loading up again... in performance clothes...

I then discovered just how cruel some of my charges could be. I mean look at this. Connie stabbed Mickey in the head repeatedly every morning....

Yep, she set herself up some grapes, and built a Mickey to eat.

After breakfast we headed back to Hollywood Disney for our final performance. This one ... for the judges.

Again, we went through the back door....

We arrived in time to h
ear one of the orchestral competitors...but soon it was our turn

(If I can figure out how to compress the video of our killer song, I'll put it up here).

The clinic following this was amazing. So fun to watch. But when it was done... we marched back out to the waiting busses, loaded up, rode around to the bus parking lot where the busses were pressed into service as changing rooms. One last performance dress shot....

After that... we were free to play at Hollywood Disney until 7:30...

there was a brief moment when I had both my girls in the same place...

But otherwise... we were off doin' our own things.

At least this time I remembered to take a picture of the iconic image...

Bookworm's group managed to find all the bizarre things that were happening on the streets of Hollywood Disney...

Even unique musicians...

We had a nice lunch and then faced a bit of bad luck. We shopped, of course, and then headed over to the Toy Story ride. I'll admit that this ride had the best line to wait in of those we've waited in...

Obviously, I knit in line... but I also looked around. The whole place set us up to feel about the size of one of those toy soldiers in the movie...

and it was full of toys!

but just as we got to the place where we could see the end... they closed the ride and sent us all out.I never did find out why. And when we asked if we could at least get a fast pass to get in faster since we'd already waited over an hour..... they said no :-(

But we had a blast in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area...

The net was sort of a web to play on...

and there were giant mushrooms...

Next, we headed over to the 3-D Muppet movie... which was fun until the
second projector died in the middle, so we saw it w/o the 3-D. It
clearly lacked something.

We made up for that by a brief trip to Endor with a droid that clearly lost track of it's programming... Here's what we saw waiting to board the shuttle for the Star Wars ride.

We tried the Movie Ride... which was kind of fun. On the way in they had props and costumes from a variety of movies. Like this dress from Shakespeare in Love:

Next up... a bit more shopping, and then dinner. A real dinner. One at a restaurant with waiters and everything.But no tables, really... .just cars

They were all lined up in a mock Drive - In movie lot. They showed clips from all sorts of old Sci-Fi movies. Some looked like great fun; I'm going to have to order a bunch up from the library.

After dinner... the Awards Ceremony!

Most of us seemed to find it exciting (all those purple shirts are our kids). But two of the guys seemed either bored or exhausted...

We cheered and laughed, and sang along to the cover band Mulch Sweat and Shears

They played a bunch of good rock and roll to warm us up for the awards. When the awards were given, our 7th/8th Grade Band earned a rating of Superior (the highest rating) and Best in Class for their performance. The Jazz Band won the Gold .. basically the best of ALL band performances, and two of our gals walked away with the only two awards honoring soloists in band performances...

At the end, after a bit more Mulch Sweat and Tears, we walked out to the busses, loaded up, and headed home.

We did the stop and pee thing, and the goofy behavior thing....

and the breakfast thing... and lunch and more riding and etc....

There was whooping an hollering on the arrival home.

Whew!

At first, I was thinking "never again". Now I'm plotting to get my family there .... so I can go again.

Friday morning, some of our crew had to get up alarmingly early. The Jazz players had to be up to perform at something scary. Luckily, our fearless leader made a command decision and allowed the rest of the band to sleep in. We didn't have to be on the bus until 8:00. We did the old, breakfast thing, and then loaded the bus...

we slipped in the back way to Hollywood Disney

Unloaded in an area never seen by most folk,

Wandered through an empty theme park

Deserted...

We trouped into the theater... and listened to our best Jazz Band do it's thing. The judges were impressed, and gave a killer clinic. While they gathered their gear, we trouped out and headed for the bus.... back out through a door marked Studio Production Personnel only...

and reboarded the bus for the quick jaunt over to Epcot! Where I took no pictures of the big ball. Lucky for me, Bookworm's chaperone was better at this.

for some reason, I was more about taking pictures of topiaries than of the obvious landmark.

But gosh... this is my favorite Disney movie. I even bought a laser disc of it (though I've never owned a laser disc player).

And hanging out with the Ballet Ostriches let me enjoy one of the few moments with BookWorm I had all trip... this shot came from MY camera!

We headed into the park, decided that the line for Soarin' was just too darned long, looked around the Land, and headed to the other side of Epcot (where all the countries are). We found more topiaries...

and more....

And finally headed over, past Canada (which we ignored completely), wandered through England, played in the hedge maze, and laughed at the fact that the weather at that moment was perfect June in England weather (warm, not hot, lightly over cast....). We wandered through Morocco, shopped a bit, I learned how to say Thank You in Moroccan (Shukaron), then we sauntered over to Japan, and played in the shop there before heading back to Morocco for lunch.

After lunch, we wandered on to Germany, had some ice cream, and boarded the Ferry back across the pond so that we could watch the Jazz band perform again.

After Jazz, we headed over to The Land to try Soarin' again. We got to do something special for this ride. We got to be part of the system that helps keep track of how long it takes to go through the lines.

It's a family thing. Bookworm got to carry one through the Space Mountain ride... i got to carry one through the Soarin' line:

This was my FAVORITE Ride in all the parks. I can't say enough about how cool it is. I'd happily ride that ride a dozen times in a row.

After Soarin, I took the kids to dinner before sending them off to participate in the next round of cool Disney performances: You're Instrumental. The kids got to record a soundtrack. En route to the busses, we found more topiaries...

While the kids made a soundtrack... I got to to spend some time at Epcot all by myself....

Okay, not by myself... I met up with my buddy DT, we did a bit more shopping in Japan...and then headed in for dinner. But not before a brief pause to listen to some excellent music....

Okay, I'm a sucker for men in kilts. Men in kilts who sing well and play bagpipes... I'm a goner.

I wound up eating in the same place the kids did... and dinner was surprisingly good. The ceiling was particularly nice.

The food was also good. And here, for the first time, I realized something about the desserts. Even the sprinkles are Disneyfied:

Look at those week Mickey sprinkles... tee hee!

Eventually, I made it back to the hotel to meet the bus, and take the kids for a bit more food, and then tuck them in for the night.

We had one last chaperone meeting by the boots, and tucked ourselves in as well.

Fresh from a successful performance at Downtown Disney, we rode our bus (with our WONDERFUL bus driver, Phil) to the Magic Kingdom. Phil dropped us off at the Transportation Center, and we'd planned to take the ferry across to the MK, but missed it by moments. We opted against waiting 20 min for the next ferry, and hopped the monorail instead.

Once again, Bookworm's chaperone/team was a better picture taker, but I tried.

My shot:

(my kids' backs) Her shot:

I tend to take more pictures of the places than of the people. But... I got the welcoming topiary!

We planned to march right in to get a fast pass for Space Mountain, but got side tracked by one of the shows at Cinderella's Castle:

By the time we got there, the Fast Pass return times were so late we'd miss our departure. We wandered Tomorrowland for a few minutes, then headed into Fantasyland. There, we nailed a FastPass for the Peter Pan ride, grabbed lunch at the Pinnochio Village Haus. After lunch, we made sure that we'd REALLY done Disney World, and went next door for the obligatory ride:

This one's for the Divine Though Blogless Elizabeth's daughter (A)

Yes... it's a Small World.

Having firmly placed the earworm in my charge's ears, I took them off for a more exciting ride ... the Mad Tea Party.

Here, I finally remembered to photograph my kids:

Then we wandered around, and discovered the Christmas Shop. I trumped the girls here...and managed to totally cover my annual ornament buying obligations -- this is the first trip to Disney for either of my girls, so clearly, a Disney ornament was required. While I did this, two of my girls hung out on the sleigh just outside...

We never even made it into half of the park. But we did finally get to ride on Space Mountain. It's where we confirmed that Kitty and roller coasters do NOT mix. We calmed down with dinner at the restaurant whose name I can't recall, there at the edge of Tomorrowland.

After that we crossed the park, pausing to see Walt and Mickey.

We took our turn with Peter Pan, and then headed over into Adventureland for our trip with the Pirates of the Carribbean. On our way, we stopped for dinner in By then, the sun was starting to set

By the time I pried them out of the shop at the end of the ride (where, btw, Capt. Jack Sparrow appeared frequently), it was full on dark and the Parade had begun

We watched a bit, and walked a bit, and watched a bit until we got back to Main Street, where we watched the fireworks. Then, we boarded the Ferry, rode back to the Transportation Center, drug ourselves across the lot to the bus, and headed back to the hotel.

After tucking the girls into their rooms (and taping them in, of course), the chaperones met back at the Boots for our nightly meeting. After that... shower and bed never felt so good.

We slept in a bit, then rousted the girls and hauled them down to breakfast in their jammies. Yep... trouped 'em right through the whole of the Disney All Star Music compound to the other end, past two swimming pools, the Jazz building, the Calypso building, the Rock building..and into the dining hall in their jammies. And faced the chaos that was the series of lines for breakfast.

I ordered what I thought was a simple basic breakfast and wound up with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, a nice biscuit, and a wedge of french toast. Woof. Oh, and coffee and OJ. Kitty got pancakes and bacon. One of my charges got ... a croissant and a chocolate muffin. Note the lack of protein? yeah, well... that's what happens when you hand over the dining cards and let them choose without parental guidance.

After breakfast, the kids got into their performance clothes, and stashed their "play clothes" into the special magic garment bags we now have for band uniforms. I hugged the Golf Pro good bye, and, armed with a memory card for my camera, boarded the bus for Downtown Disney.

The incredible equipment crew (none of whom are reading this, but all of whom deserve thanks and praise for the amazing job they did all week), hauled out all the instruments, and set them where folks could find them.

The 6th grade band grabbed their instruments while the 7th/8th grade band kids trouped on into the world of commerce that is Downtown Disney.

We stopped to appreciate things you can do with LEGOs.

BookWorm's chaperone even got her kids to pose with LEGOs

They also saw other amazing things that you can do with LEGOS, but my gang didn't want to check out the LEGO store (okay, Kitty did, but she was over-ruled).

Again, BookWorm's group was up for playing and posing....

And I learned that she loves Cinderalla...

My gang just headed into the commerce zone

My gang split up promptly, and wandered about the store. Bookworm's group played together a bit more, and posed for more silly pictures.

Why is it that only after seeing that picture, I want that top hat w/ the mouse ears??

After a brief flirtation with shopping, we headed to the WaterSide stage and watched the 6th graders perform. They were great. Then, we trouped back out to the bus to get the 7th/8th grade instruments and prepare for their performance.

Despite what could have been a frenzied situation, our director and amazing Bus Captain were cool and calm..

We lined up, warmed up, and marched out to the stage. We THOUGHT it would be all set up for us, just like we needed it to be... but you might notice a lot of empty space back here...

That's where we expected chairs for the trombone section. Oops.Eventually, we got it all squared away, and everyone had a seat.

If you look very carefully, you can see Bookworm there, hiding behind all the Bones...

And despite her position in the third row behind everyone in the center, I managed a shot in which Kitty is visible.

While this was going on, I found my dear friend DT and her daughter, who joined us there to listen to my kids play. DT has some better shots, but then she has a better camera. The band played beautifully. Despite the frisky wind, which, at one point pretty much stole the trombone section's music. Here's one sheet that it threw into the lakeOoops.

But despite the flying sheet music, they finished the piece with nary a misplayed note. I, personally, think they're awesome.

After enjoying their well-deserved applause, the band trouped back to the busses, which were turned into dressing rooms. While the staff (chaperones, and equipment haulers) got all the ties, cummerbunds, music and music folders, and insturments stowed appropriately, the kids changed from band uniforms to comfies. We then headed off to the Magic Kingdom!